It is almost impossible that any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were armed when scuffles broke out as guards attempted to transfer them from communal living quarters to individual cells, Cindy Panuco, a lawyer representing a Gitmo detainee, told RT.

US Military guards at Guantanamo Bay fired 'less than lethal
rounds' when prisoners from Camp 6 – a medium-security
building which houses 80 to 100 detainees – allegedly fought back with makeshift weapons on
Saturday while being moved.

While the US Military accused the detainees of covering
surveillance cameras, windows and partitions to prevent guards
from observing them during their two-month-plus hunger strike,
Panuco said the real point of the move was to break the
prisoners' resolve.

RT: Was your client involved in this alleged scuffle?

Cindy Panuco: I represent [Afghan detainee] Obaidullah,
and given the restrictions on our communications with him as his
Habeas [Corpus] attorneys, we have not been able to be in touch
with him to find out whether or not he was involved and whether
or not he is doing okay. Our understanding is the same as yours.
It’s what’s gone out and what’s been provided to the media, that
he has been placed into isolation along with everyone else.

RT: We're hearing the inmates responded with makeshift
weapons. How desperate are they to fight back despite the
conditions that they must be under at this point?

CP: Well, it’s interesting to find out that they have
makeshift weapons. Whenever we have gone down to visit our
clients, the only things that they are allowed is small ballpoint
inserts of a pen. They’re plastic, little, almost like straws
with ink at the end of them. That’s pretty much all they’re
allowed, so I don’t see, especially given the invasive searches
that were conducted in February, what kind of makeshift weapons
the government is referring to. That’s still to be determined,
especially since there’s no way they could have any sort of
weapons.

RT: Why do you think the authorities are trying to isolate
the detainees at this point?

CP: Well, they [the US Military] are claiming that it’s to
be able to monitor their health. But probably, if you asked our
clients, this is just another measure that they’re taking to make
it more difficult to endure continuing to starve themselves and
continuing to protest. If they’re together, if they’re in
communal living space, they can communicate and at least support
each other. And now that they’re being isolated, it’s another
form of torment. To be taken away from your other friends and
comrades who are there with you, it makes it much more difficult
to endure what is already a very difficult situation.

RT: For weeks, the US Military has allegedly played down
the scale of the hunger strike. Do you think there will be more
scrutiny now following the latest incident?

CP: I hope so. At last count by the US government’s
numbers, there were about 43 men on strike. My co-counsel who
represents Obaidullah [Derek Poteet] visited him just two days
ago at Guantanamo. Obaidullah described Camp 6 as looking like a
village which had been decimated by some sort of attack, with men
just walking around very feebly, very weak, barely able to have
any energy to even communicate with each other.

It’s a very, very sad and difficult situation, and the reaction
of the US is the opposite of what it should be. This strike, the
protest, it could have been resolved not with violence, but by
simply agreeing to allow the men to return the Korans to the US
government; to surrender them so that they did not have to watch
them continue to be desecrated and searched.

RT: Do you think there is an end in sight to this hunger
strike at any point?

CP: Sixty eight days now our client has gone without
taking any food from the US authorities, and it appears that
rather than do something as simple as allow them men to surrender
their Korans, they are instead isolating them, resorting to
firing rubber bullets at them and resorting to tying them down
and force-feeding them with tubes up their noses. It appears
that, unless there is [more] international pressure, then the
protest will continue and the US will continue in actions that
will be retaliatory.